


therapy (of both the physical and emotional variety)

by sugarplumfairy



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, General spoilers, Grief, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Wound Tending, no betas we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:55:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22838944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sugarplumfairy/pseuds/sugarplumfairy
Summary: Seteth and Byleth both have wounds to tend after the battle at Gronder. Some are more visible than others.
Relationships: My Unit | Byleth/Seteth
Comments: 7
Kudos: 102





	therapy (of both the physical and emotional variety)

**Author's Note:**

> i'm waist deep, WAIST DEEP in setleth right now and i know yall are going "plum where's the smut??" let me write my tender hurt/comfort fic before nobody lets me get an sfw fic in ever again

She took note of her slight limp as she walked there with mild annoyance. She was no stranger to injury, but she hoped this one wouldn’t result in any bad habits.

If Jeralt were around to see her favor her right side after something so trivial as an arrow to the knee… No. She couldn’t allow herself to get wistful about Jeralt, not when her thoughts were already crowded with memories of how much Bernie had cried as her lifeblood spilled into the grass, with the deep sorrow on Claude’s face as he’d taken the shot that hobbled her even now.

She trudged on through the empty hallway, the quiet dark a welcome reprieve from the headache that had plagued her since Gronder. She corrected her gait as much as she could manage while she walked, and soon found herself in front of Seteth’s door.

She raised her hand to knock, hesitated halfway. _What would she even say?_ Just as she turned away, the door opened.

“Byleth?” Seteth asked, his lean figure silhouetted in the moonlight. “I thought that might have been you wandering around.”

He probably hadn’t been sleeping, but his hair was tousled like he’d been trying to. He wore loose pants and a simple tunic that exposed his arms and his bandaged shoulder. He looked as tired as she felt.

“Is Flayn still asleep?” Byleth asked. It was an easier topic than the one she’d come to talk about.

“Yes. As a…” He glanced around the empty corridor and lowered his voice. “As a _father,_ thank you for keeping her away from the front lines the other day. It was harrowing enough for her to be in the reserves.”

“Oh, Seteth,” she said. “No need to thank me. I knew it would be a difficult battle.”

He studied her face as she trailed off into silence, as if aware that she had more to say.

“It… _was_ a difficult battle,” she amended, and then lapsed into silence again. This was stupid. What did she even hope to gain from coming here?

Seteth reached for her arm, and she noticed how he winced when he did so.

“You hide your emotions well, but I can tell that something troubles you.” He tugged at her sleeve. “Come in.”

She followed him into his quarters, careful to be quiet near Flayn’s closed door. A pot of water was boiling over the fire, and Seteth reached for another teacup to add to the one already on the table before Byleth could protest.

“I was making tea for myself and I thought I’d gotten too much water, but it turned out to be just right.” He reached for the water pot but Byleth slapped him on the wrist and picked it up herself.

“Goddess smite me, let me do that,” she said, and poured water into both cups. “Please let the person with two functional shoulders do the lifting and reaching.”

Seteth laughed softly and dropped a few tea leaves into each cup. “Then please allow the person with two functional knees to do the walking next time.”

Byleth watched him sip his tea, her eyes drawn to his bandaged shoulder. Even in the dim light, a shadow under the fabric was apparent. “Shouldn’t you change your dressing soon?” she asked as she picked up her tea.

Seteth almost choked, but recovered and swallowed it down with grace. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, which had the (likely intentional) effect of muffling his voice.

“I’ll ask Flayn to do it once you leave.”

She set her cup down on its saucer without drinking. Seteth’s eyes flicked up to meet hers.

“No, you won’t,” Byleth said with the kind of even calm that made his heart stutter. “You’ll say ‘Oh, she’s sleeping so peacefully. It would be a shame to wake her,’ and go to sleep anyway, and then it’ll get infected and you’ll be in deep shit, Seteth. Deep shit. Where’s your kit?”

“You don’t have to—”

“ _Where’s your kit?_ ” she asked again, in the voice typically reserved for her students.

“At my bedside,” he admitted without hesitation. As she left, he allowed himself some pride at the success of their training sessions on authority.

Byleth soon returned with fresh bandages and salve, and he wordlessly removed his tunic to give her full access to the wound. He noticed how her eyes trailed over his bare torso, stuttered on the patch of dark green hair that disappeared below his waistband, but bit back his comment.

“I doubt you came here just to fuss over me,” Seteth said instead as she unwound the old wrap. “Something’s on your mind.”

She continued her work in silence for a moment before she let out a soft sigh. “We’ve both seen our fair share of battles,” she said. “Gronder was by far the most difficult for me.”

She hesitated to continue. Seteth gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. “How so?”

“They—”she stopped short as the last layer of fabric peeled away to reveal the gruesome burn beneath. It was a magical burn, evident in the way the marred skin turned yellow and caustic at the edges of the wound, still red and angry in the center.

“It is not as painful as it appears,” he said, and craned his neck to look at it as best he could. “I’ve endured far worse.”

Byleth said nothing, but took his upper arm with a gentle touch. She dipped her fingers into the jar of salve and massaged it first into the edges of the burn, then in towards the center.

“You were about to say something,” Seteth said, and tried not to wince at Byleth’s ministrations, careful as she was.

Byleth took a deep breath. “They weren’t even my students, but…”

“…But they were, in a way,” Seteth finished for her when it became clear that she wouldn’t on her own. “I understand more than anyone, Byleth. I do not teach a house, but they are my students as well.”

She wiped her fingers on a clean spot of the old bandage and picked at the edge of the new roll. “I mean, I know this is war, and we can’t afford to let our feelings get in the way, but—”

“But you celebrated their birthdays, and took note of their favorite things, and gave them counsel when they needed it.” He lifted his arm for Byleth to rewrap.

“Petra’s Fódlanian improved a lot. And Bernadetta grew her hair out,” she said. Seteth heard her voice waver. “And Leonie… she’s a woman now. She _was_ …”

Byleth bit down on her lip and tears rolled down her face. Seteth picked through the linens on the table and, finding none of them clean, brushed her tears away with the back of his hand. Her hand found his, small and slender in his grasp, and he tried to hide his surprise at the display – Jeralt himself had said that he’d never seen her cry.

“And I _killed_ them, Seteth,” she choked out. “I killed them and I couldn’t even bring myself to cry about it.”

“But you’re crying now, aren’t you?” He rubbed his thumb over the back of her hand.

“You know they used to call me the Ashen Demon in my mercenary days? Because I seemed heartless. Because I’d just kill people without flinching.” She drew a shaky breath. “When I was a mercenary I never knew the people I killed. But even then, when it was my old students… I couldn’t…”

In that moment, Seteth understood everything she couldn’t bring herself to say.

“Oh, Byleth,” he said, and pulled her close with his uninjured arm. He felt another sob shudder through her. “As a witness to your grief, you are anything but heartless. You displayed your strength when you needed to, in front of your army, but—”

“Grief is not weakness.”

“No, it is not. And the fact that you understand shows me that you have a bigger heart than most everyone I’ve met.” He tucked her hair behind her ear. “It is not uncommon to grieve. And it is not uncommon to save your grief for behind closed doors. You can let yourself grieve.”

She took a few more moments to compose herself before she pulled away and nodded. “Better.”

“It’s not going to go away all at once,” Seteth said. “I’m sure you know this already.”

“I know,” Byleth replied. She continued to wrap the new bandage. “But for now, better.”

“Don’t feel the need to carry it by yourself. I don’t know if there is any single person that _can_ shoulder that weight.”

Byleth tucked the end of the bandage into itself and pressed a kiss to it. “That sounds like the kind of advice I should be giving you.”

Seteth smiled, but it grew stale as he noticed her limp.

“You’re not going to walk all the way back, are you?”

“What else am I going to do, fly?”

Seteth didn’t find her joke particularly funny. He glanced at Flayn’s closed door.

“Stay here tonight.”

She nearly choked. “What?”

“We can sneak you out in the morning. I just… don’t relish the thought of you walking back in this state.” Seteth felt his face burn. No one in hundreds of years had ever made him feel flustered like this. “Not to say that you’re _incapable,_ which you, of course, are—”

“I’ll stay,” Byleth said. Her usual cool demeanor felt more like detached surprise this time. “You’ve never asked me to stay before.”

“I, well. There is a first time for everything, is there not?”

“Indeed there is.”


End file.
